Voice in Violins
by Desdemona Kakalose
Summary: "Ah, children, be afraid to go to bed prayerless," he said, "lest the devil lie with you". And his voice was the hum of a violin, his lips the taste of piano. Edgar was, as always, powerless in the end. Scriabin/Edgar


**.A Voice of Violins.**

"Ah, children, be afraid to go to bed prayerless, lest the devil lie with you".

_AN: I plead the fifth here. I can't explain to you what I was thinking when I wrote this... So, yeah, Edgar and Scriabin belong to Zarla, in this context. Not mine._

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Moonlight slithered between the blinds, coiling around the sheets and leaving trails of glowing white over a face, over the angry scars below the eyes.

Edgar lay half-awake, half-dreaming in the striped darkness. It was funny, but he couldn't seem to remember if that window had always been above his bed. There was the sound of violins, half real, like a symphony playing in his head, the taste of their melodies in his mouth. His tongue slip over his lips, catching a hint of piano, with too many layers of twisting tunes for his half-dreaming mind to comprehend.

There was a shadow in the darkness beside him. It was the collision of black in on itself, creating what at first glance seemed to be a void. But a void was nothing, zero, and this felt like something. Like anti-matter, like a sharp in the midst of flats, the feeling was all wrong. Light glanced off his eyes—no, glasses—breaking the gloom, blinding him for seconds that seemed to pause and then rush to catch themselves. Each second seemed a note in the night, lagging and jumping, the minor violin and the mad piano.

There were eyes behind the glasses—probably—and a long, straight nose below, and lips twisting into that strange facsimile of a smile. Its face was like a porcelain mask, the perfect semblance of humanity and fundamentally, yet, inhuman. Between the draws of bow across string, Edgar imagined that his lips would taste of that mad piano, that impossibly complex melody that turned in and over and against itself, daring him to comprehend. Leaving him no choice but to read between the lines.

He—or it—smiled at Edgar, a derisive pull at the corners of his mouth.

"You never said your payers, my dear," he says, in a voice so low that it hums, matching the violin pitch for pitch until they are the same sound. "Distracted?"

Edgar looks at the face that is his own—but no, there are no scars below those eyes, no mark to show that time and fate have had their way with him. Unlike Edgar, he would not have allowed it. And Edgar doesn't feel like himself, or rather, he feels more himself than ever before, no longer an island in a sea of men but a universe unto himself , perfectly alone, perfectly only. There is no world beyond this room with its blue-black shadows and empty corners.

_Did_ he say his prayers tonight? It seems an odd thing to think, an odd thing to concern himself with. Should he remember? He can't seem to remember anything, not quite, though he feels that he knows everything, somehow.

And the shadow man slides his hand across the sheets, turning the minute wrinkles in its path, leaving traces, disturbing and changing as it goes. Fingers brush Edgar's hip, promising impossible things, sends shivers through the half-dreaming flesh. He smiles that mysterious, mocking smile.

"Don't you know?"

Edgar can feel behind those glasses, he can feel himself being seen. Can feel that bit of himself laid bare, can feel the twitch of fingers on his chest, that itch to steal more and take more and _own_…

And his lips are above Edgar's, close enough that he can _almost_ feel them. Something grips his chest from the inside, catches his breath short. The violin goes on, and the piano, the taste of piano is a ghost in his senses, frustrating and confusing and tantalizing.

"Scriabin," he says.

"What do you want?" Scriabin asks, and the breath pushes against Edgar's mouth, urging him to taste it. There are hands on either side of his head, pianist fingers spread so close but never quite touching. A body above his own, identical, knees on either side of his own. Never touching; only trapping. "What do you want, my dear?"

"A shudder breaks along Edgar's body, fear woven with curiosity, creating the most alluring sort of terror. Horror. Half-dreaming or half-awake? Perhaps neither. Not asleep, no, certainly not. Sleep is a lie, someone told him that, and this goes beyond truth or lies.

"Do you know what I want?" Scriabin breathes. The eerie hum of the violin is his voice, drawing things from the depths of Edgar that have never seen the light since they were first birth in shadow, in shame. Sliver-blue glass floats above him, framed by a fall of dark hair. There is strand of yarn woven into it.

Scriabin's lips crash down on his, pressing them together with a kind of furious passion that screams both of hiding and hidden things. The taste of piano overwhelmed him, wild piano, playing layer on layer with impossible complexity, did the composer even understand what he had created? Scriabin's tongue invades him, carrying a crescendo of cords that only seems to build after each fall, sending shocks in every direction. Edgar's eyes fly wide open.

He fights back, unsure of why, except that it seems to be required, almost as if Scriabin expects it, demands it.

Dares it.

Notes crash together, creating wild dissonance as they move against each other. Edgar can feel Scriabin inside of him, and his fingers sliding lower and lower—daring, threatening, ordering. And still, Edgar pushes back, when he can, skin electrified and mind dizzied with the sound of clashing, matching keys.

Scriabin's hand meets hardened flesh and grasps it, suddenly, pulling his lips from the mad dance. He smiles, cruelly, laughingly, the moonlight tangled in his hair.

"Of course you don't," he whispers, "You have no _idea_ what I want."

And the fingers tighten, and Edgar cries out, turning away from the shadow above him. Controlling him. Breaking him. The music is all around, growing and folding into itself and out, maddening harmonies born of dissonance.

"Ah, children," Scriabin seems to quote, voice a lead violin in the dark symphony, "Be afraid to go to bed prayerless, lest the devil lie with you."

His eyes are pulled, inevitably, back to the mirrored lenses looming over him, and he sees the universe of that room reflected there, sees the moon broken by the blinds. White and perfect, sharp and soft.

Fingertips play him with musician's skill, matching the impossible complexity beat for beat, matching the still growing tremors. That piano breaks into a final, burning harmony. The moon seems to swallow everything, catching the dark-blue room with white-hot fire as the violin makes one blazing draw, breaking from a moan into a scream and all the things he had been sure of spin away, leaving him alone to writhe under that shadow that calls himself Scriabin.

And then it shatters.

Edgar opens his eyes to find himself alone, utterly alone, with the moonlight pouring in from the window to the left of his bed, and he is too broken to be ashamed. He breathes, heavily; the phantom taste of wild piano lingers on his tongue, toxic and beautiful.

And the Devil had lain with him.


End file.
